skirts, and contracting to the smallest wearable
dimensions at the waist. Its hue was a
rich snuff-coloured brown, and like the
garments which it so exquisitely companioned, it
was overlaid with scarlet worsted embroidery,
in vandyked braudenbourgs, as they are called,
in front, and of a tendril-formed device on
the sleeves and round the lower edges. "And
upon what occasion," I asked, "could this
suit be worn?" "But, whenever Monsieur
pleases," was the reply; "though," he added,
perceiving probably some symptoms of doubt
in my countenance, "I invented that costume
chiefly for in-doors wear; in the morning, at
breakfast, for example, for study and for
repose." Study and repose! In such garments! I
made the tailor a low bow, and left him to
find another customer, and I dare say he has
secured one before this.

It would be a curious history, no doubt, if
one could trace that suit of clothes from the
first purchaser to the last; from its original
display in the Palais Royal to its final exhibition
in Rag Fair. This thought suggested to
me the idea of paying a visit to the great
repository of cast-off finery in the Rue du Temple,
and, hailing a citadine as I left the Palais
Royal, I desired to be driven there. Cabmen
have one common propensity in all great
cities; they invariably choose their course
through the most obscure and narrowest
streets. Perhaps, considering the point I
started from, there was not much choice on
this occasion, for my route lay through the
heart of Paris, traversing the Place des
Victoires (I wonder if the statue of the Grand
Monarque is reconciled to the low
neighbourhood), and cutting across the Rue
Montmartre, the Rue St.-Denis, the Rue
St.-Martin, and threading streets that bear the
strangest names, until I emerged into positive
daylight, in a broad part of the Rue du
Temple, close to the place I was in search of.
The easiest and pleasantest way, if you are
on the north side of Paris, is to take the line
of the Boulevards, but there is no difficulty in
reaching the spot from any quarter; only it
is as well to give the name of the street in
which the Halle au Vieux-Linge is situated,
or you may be taken to some other depot of
frippery, there being two or three more in
Paris, though on a smaller scale.

Until the great street, now in progress—
which so boldly cuts its way through
everything—was begun, few parts of Paris had
witnessed more change than the Quartier du
Temple. It is scarcely necessary to say that
the quartier so called derives its name from
an establishment of Knights-Templars. Those
military monks, the offspring of the Crusades,
were settled in Paris as far back as anno
Domini eleven hundred and forty-seven, in
which year they held a chapter of their order;
not, it is believed, upon the present site of
the Temple, which, however, was founded
where it afterwards remained, somewhere
about anno Domini eleven hundred and eighty.
According to an old map of Paris, the building
stood, not only at some distance from the
inhabited part of the city, but nearly half a
mile outside the walls, between the stream
called Menil-Montant and the Porte du
Braque, one of the fortified gates of the third
enclosure of Paris, which was made by Philip
Augustus. You would be very much puzzled
to trace the course of that stream now, and if
you wished to find the fortified gate, you must
look for its former locality close to the
Imperial Printing-office, in the Rue Vieille du
Temple—an edifice which, before it was
converted to its present uses, was owned by the
Cardinal de Rohan, too celebrated for the
part he played in the affair of the Diamond
Necklace. The Temple was originally a
simple monastery, but as the brotherhood
increased in wealth and extended their territory
(until their domain bore the designation of
Ville Neuve du Temple), the necessity for
defending their property arose, and, in the
year twelve hundred and twelve, Hubert, the
treasurer of the order, constructed the famous
tower, which, nearly six centuries afterwards,
became the prison of Louis the Sixteenth and
Marie Antoinette. It was built in the form
of a square, with the great tower in the centre
and four turrets at the angles of the lofty
walls, and as the city continued to increase,
it stood in the midst of civilisation an
unchanged memorial of feudal anarchy. The
fate of its earliest occupants is well known.
For a hundred years after the erection of
their fortress, the Knights-Templars
continued to flourish, and held so high a
jurisdiction that the Enclos du Temple—as it was
termed—became, like the precincts of our
own Whitefriars, a sanctuary for homicides,
cutpurses, bankrupts, and debtors of every
degree, the two last-named classes enjoying
the privilege of asylum down to the period of
the first French revolution. But, at the
commencement of the fourteenth century, the
wealth of the Templars had become so great,
that Philippe le Bel, who at that time reigned
over France, resolved upon the confiscation of
their property and their utter extermination.
The cruelty of his persecution stands out in
dark relief even against the many horrors that
were perpetrated during the middle ages;
and with the death of Jacques de Molai, the
Grand Master, who was burnt at the stake in
thirteen hundred and fourteen, the Order of
the Knights-Templars entirely passed away.
The king immediately seized upon their
treasures, of which, however, he had but brief
enjoyment, being killed by a fall from his
horse about eight months afterwards. The
fortress he kept as a royal treasury; and the
monastery, with its dependencies, he gave to
the Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem,—a
brotherhood better known in later times as
the Knights of Malta. These latter, who built
a magnificent palace in the enclosure, retained
possession of the property until their order
was, in its turn, extinguished. The ascetic